


Flowers

by sparklight



Series: Coming Home [1]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Developing Relationship, Drama & Romance, F/M, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24150895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklight/pseuds/sparklight
Summary: Hades offers Persephone a flower, and she unknowingly accepts a whole marriage at the same time as she plucks the gift. Persephone finds flowers where one might think there grows none, and makes use of them for her own gift.Somehow, it's not so bad.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Series: Coming Home [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883899
Comments: 4
Kudos: 57





	Flowers

"You seem like you like flowers very much."

Persephone jerks back from the violets, her heart startling like a young fawn, breath choking her. Snapping her back straight, she tips her head back, squinting into the sunlight. The man - _god_ \- is very tall. Taller than her and her father, who are among the tallest, she knows. Athena is of a height with them, but not many others of her family are.

"It's very rude to startle people and then also not introduce yourself," Persephone says, eyes narrowing less for the sunlight and more due to her displeasure. This is her place, this beautiful, treasured sprawling meadow, and he comes here without so much as a greeting? She knows who he is, of course. She hasn't talked to him before, but she knows him, has seen him. Can smell faint wisps of the rich rot of the Underworld's marsh on him, sweet in an entirely different way from nectar and ambrosia.

"... Hades." He tips his head, sleek black hair sliding forward with the motion and turning bluish in the sunlight caught in the dark strands. He's surprisingly pale, though considering where he lives, not so strange. She just hasn't thought about it before.

"Persephone," she says, _nearly_ sweet now, and the smile is mostly just for politeness' sake but he's mollified her enough she's not practically biting his essence with it, "and yes, I do. How can anyone _not_? They last for such a short time, but are so beautiful while they do."

Her smile turns softer; can't help it with this topic, and reaches out to brush fingertips over the nodding heads of a couple of the violets she'd intended to pluck. There are crocuses among them, too, but she has enough of those. She ignores the toes just beyond her hand, the dark leather straps crossing over pale skin, rising up to hug strong, yet graceful, ankles and muscled calves. She does not look up higher, though she can catch the turn of knees in the upper edge of her vision, before the pile of her hair hides the rest from view.

"If you wanted my mother, she's not here at the moment." She snaps off a couple of the violets, arranges them among her other flowers. This was the only thing she went over to this end of the meadow for - everyone else is on the other end.

"No. You were gathering your flowers with such obvious thought. I was curious." The feet leave her vision, and Persephone, frowning, looks up - but Hades is already gone, so quickly and smoothly she felt no flex of power, no rush of wind from him taking to the sky. But then, he'd be going down, not _up_ , wouldn't he? She shakes her head, gets to her knees. Pauses there, mouth softening from a much less unpleasant surprise. There are tall, proud flowers where Hades stood before. He must have been standing in front of them, though she can't remember there being narcissi in this meadow before. The white petals are nearly star-like in shape, and the bold thrust of the inner trumpet bright yellow and edged in red at the end. Charmed, Persephone reaches out, forgetting her unexpected and rude visitor.

She's barely taken one narcissus before the ground splits open, shuddering with the thunder of hooves and chariot wheels, and the flowers in her hands scatter on the ground, along and onto rocks as the light disappears. All but the narcissus she's shoving at the god's face, trying to push him away.

"Father, help! _Mother_!"

~*~

It was the flowers that were important.

It was by the flowers the King of the Underworld noticed Persephone as anything beyond her breathtaking beauty; flowers she chose with a narrow-eyed, thoughtful look, flowers she plucked with neat, decisive twists of her fingers, needing no knife. Flowers the youthful goddess arranged in bouquets with care, placed after mood, a theme sometimes, patterns esoteric and unknowable at others. Persephone picked and arranged her flowers not as a girl does for play, for the most superficial of beauty; she picked flowers like some men chose their soldiers for war, their oxen for sacrifice, and she never, ever used her power to extend their life.

She picked flowers after season, arranged them as season allowed, took care of them in their bound bouquets or stone-filled vases, and let them die as they would.

A flower was what Hades offered, the fruit of a flower was what he gave her.

~*~

"What do you _want_?!" Persephone cries, storming inside the throne room and scattering shades and judges both, all aside from the king on his throne. She had raged, and then cried, when he'd first brought her down, offended and upset she would be beholden to the weight of a bridal gift she hadn't even known was one, outraged it had been one so tailored to her likes. Afraid that gift would be the last kindness she'd ever know. And yet a month has passed and Hades has barely looked at her, even less _touched_ her. She has avoided him for weeks, and he has let her. It's entirely contrary to both her own expectations and the way the script of the ritual Hades himself has invoked goes.

"A wife in my bed, a queen on the throne beside mine." Hades is unmoveable, a towering presence with surprisingly delicately crossed ankles where his feet are resting on the ornately carved footrest. He shifts a little though, leaning back slightly, slim, dark eyebrows furrowed just a shade. These are details Persephone cannot read yet. Details she has no desire to read yet and that she cares nothing for as she presses her lips thin, the thick eyebrows her father gave her lowered like storm clouds over narrowed eyes.

"And yet you have done nothing to gain either, aside from bringing me here. Are you waiting for my father's approval?" She knows that cannot be it. Hades must surely already have talked to his brother, for as much as Persephone wishes to think her father _wouldn't_ do this without telling her, without telling her mother. But her mother had gone out of her way to dissuade suitors after Apollo and a couple others showed interest and has only recently eased up again. She still hasn't been back to Olympos yet, and now--- Persephone doesn't finish the thought, determinedly pushing it away. Does not _want_ to finish that thought.

"You are here because he approves," Hades says, completely avoiding the first half of her statement, the part where her confusion lies; if he intends to wed her, why has he then not... well, finished it?

"And so?" Frustration sharpens her tone, raises her voice, and Hades shifts again, his eyes pale like the moon, like a far more placid mirror of Zeus' eyes.

"I will do this as I see fit." He's avoiding her gaze though, a shift to the side away from her, like he cannot bear the weight of her roused emotion. It's the only reason she doesn't explode, though whether it's better that she swallows her confused anger and straightens up, chin raised, glaring with a fierceness that is both her own and magnified from her parents. There are tears threatening to spill over, but she refuses to acknowledge that.

"Then I, too, will do as I see fit."

She storms out, angry, confused, alone. Hades remains on his throne and lets her.

~*~

The underworld's asphodels were not brief, blooming treasures; they lasted as long as they needed, souls clinging to the blooms. They withered only when a shade let go, to chance unknowing rebirth. As flowers, they rather violated the very precepts of what a flower was supposed to be. Too, the small grove of pomegranate trees bloomed rarely and the fruit resulting from the blooming took forever to ripen, hiding tiny seeds of living rubies within that bled as red as mortal blood when burst. Again, the seasons they followed was not so much a dark inversion of the life above as a violation of it, a stubborn mockery that knew no growing, no rot, no life.

Flowers were supposed to last but for a season, brightly brief in spite of the little time they had; that was part of their charm, their magic. Persephone found no beauty in the ghosts of flowers covering the asphodel fields, nor even the eternal late spring of Elysium.

~*~

She is lost, even with companions that are growing to become friends, and sometimes resents them because they are here and her other friends are not. Sometimes, she simply has to get away, and so Persephone wanders. There's not much to see, but she finds the marshes at the edges of the rivers, beyond the fields, far away from the threatening deeps of Tartarus. Stinking, dark, the water rotten and still. Depressing, sweetly dying life. And yet... She catches sight of the first of them out of the corner of her eye, nearly hidden behind a spray of dark, heavy reeds. Persephone turns to walk around the reeds and realizes the ground is not as stable as it seems when she puts her foot down on a tuft of grass and finds herself to the ankle in cold, stagnant water. Despite the flinch, she continues, a two-three hop skips that has her wetting the sole of her other foot in mud, but what she finds makes her smile.

She is lost down here, alone but growing unwilling roots in unfamiliar surroundings. That she then has found a little clump of flowers behind the reeds in the marshy edges seems like a startling familiarity. Half of them have bloomed over, the rest are still shyly blooming, tiny and pale in the dark. Despite what happened the last time she found flowers connected to Hades, she reaches out and plucks them.

Later, Hades looks up to laughter, to Persephone scattering newly arrived shades (again) as she comes in. The nymphs she's gathered around her remain shyly in the doorway, but Persephone strides forward, tracking mud and dark drips of water onto the floor. There's a path all the way out, down the corridor and beyond sight. The lady herself is muddy from feet to knees, her skirts a dark, sodden mess along with her, mud and dark, wet spots of water spattering her above her knees up to the waist of her short robe, darkening the sleeves around the elbows, from where mud, again, covers her down to her fingertips. There are spots of mud spattered on her face, and the ends of her long, red hair are sodden and drab, clinging to the wet fabric.

She's holding a bouquet in her hands.

"For you," she says, pointed and sharp and her eyes are knives, but there's a strange sort of sweetness behind the razor light as well, and Hades can see why when he looks down. There's a spray of dark marsh grass in her hands, two collections of mallow flowers, a little separate, and below them a thick, drawn-out bunch of pale, nearly ghostly yellow henbane.

"... It's a skull." It's honestly rather funny in its own way, but it is also a startling show of _Persephone_ down here. She has found flowers, and has plucked them with her usual sharp care, arranged them with intent. Whether the intent is insult or perhaps some pointed test, something Hades cannot see, doesn't really matter. He finds himself surprisingly charmed anyway, for the flowers are not the long-gone pomegranate flowers of his little orchard where the fruit is slowly ripening, are not the near-eternal asphodels, or the many flowers of Elysium, but rather the pale versions of the flowers above that grows in the marshes that line the underworld's rivers, mark out the borders of his domain. They are life, made into a representation of death, and they will soon be dead.

"As I said; for you, my lord." She flutters her lashes, and that's entirely insincere, he can see that, but it does not take anything away from her beauty... or the intent of the gift. He takes it.

"Thank you."

She leaves then, and while he is tempted to infuse the flowers with power, to keep them alive for longer than they would otherwise be, he remembers what Persephone said up above, remembers what he's seen of her, how she deals with her arrangements and bouquets.

Hades has a table brought as well as something to keep the flowers in, and leaves them beside his throne.

A week later when Persephone wanders back in, she pauses, stares at the obsidian and silver table with its three graceful legs wrought into the likeliness of upside-down torches, stares at the vase on top. At the flowers. They have water, of course, but a week is a week.

"They're dying."

They are indeed. Hades glances to them, and while he is once more tempted to revive them, he looks back to the goddess he's brought to his realm with the intent of marriage and nods.

"It's your gift to me, my lady. I will not treat them differently than you would do."

She blinks, and then her eyes soften to back-lit honey for a moment, wide-eyed and surprised. He has apparently been paying attention. More than that, he respects the flowers, their life, _her_ enough to do as she would, even if he doesn't understand. Persephone eyes him, thoughtfully, now. Maybe he does, though. He's the ruler of the Underworld, the God of the Dead, and though most of the riches of the earth that he presides over are hard, the gleam of metal and jewels, seeds germinate under the surface of the earth and all living things fall to the earth to nourish it in death. Maybe he does understand. 

"They're still beautiful," she says, slowly, still thoughtful. Hades tips his head, glancing to them, then back to her.

"They are."

Her smile is slow, small, and contains a whole universe.

The flowers are indeed still beautiful, even withering and drying, dropping petals onto the tabletop.

~*~

There were flowers even in the Underworld, flowers that weren't asphodels, flowers that did not grow in the impossible sunshine of Elysium. Flowers that sprouted, budded, bloomed and died like all flowers do, all over the world. Flowers that followed the rules of the order, of life and death. One only had to look a little beyond the jewel-glittering solemnity of Hades' halls, beyond the places for the shades, whether that was the places of punishment, rest or reward.

Flowers were brief, and so perhaps the King of the Underworld should have realized he could not lay eternal, permanent claim to a goddess who loved flowers like Persephone did, who let them grow and die as they would, whether plucked for her pleasure or left in the ground.

~*~

Persephone is still confused as to why, so very many months later, Hades has not brought her to his bed yet. She does not know if she would protest it like she did being brought down here, but it's a smaller matter; she's more baffled by the fact that he simply has not done it. Not a gesture, not a word, demanding or otherwise. She's not even sure where, exactly, Hades' personal rooms are.

It's a mystery.

It's also almost enough of a distraction from how she misses her mother, how she misses Athena and Artemis and her nymph companions. The ones she has here, naiads of the Coctys and a couple Lampads not currently with Hecate, are very nice, but they're new. Unknown, though she's of course gotten to know them better these past months, but it's not the same. She misses her meadow and she even misses Olympos, for all that she hadn't been _too_ upset when Demeter had whisked them away, angry for some unearthly reason Persephone _still_ doesn't understand when she first got courted. None of them - not even Hermes, with his clever kisses and the way he could make her laugh - would have been interesting to her as a husband. At least all of them had approached her in full view and knowledge of both her parents, and if Demeter hadn't gone to ground, maybe this wouldn't be happening like this.

She's not sure whether she's angry at her mother or Hades - mostly Hades, of course, but even that is a soft anger, by now.

Soft anger that then leaves her with the growing sickness of her longing, undeniable. She hasn't even been able to say good bye, and now... Now what? Going to the Underworld was not necessarily a one-way trip, not for those who belonged to the ranks of the Deathless Ones, but even for them it was not easy if they didn’t have ties to the Underworld, and she cannot find the way out by herself. So she is here, learning the shape of the man who has by all intents and purposes married her while yet not quite finished it, for some sense of... what? Personal honour, though he saw no issue abducting her with her father's permission instead of approaching her and her mother and telling Demeter what Zeus had decided?

It's infuriating as much as it's almost weirdly charming, that he is allowing her this space while still not letting go.

"Persephone." Hades comes up to her on his way to the throne room, Minos and Rhadamanthys continuing on, allowing Hades to pause. Hesitate, even. She tips her head, arches an eyebrow. Waits silently, half because she thinks he deserves it, half because he does not need her permission or indulgence to say whatever it is he has come to her to say, and if he took her with such force, he can speak now, too. Finally, he stretches a hand out, offering her the rough, rocky sphere he's holding. "For you."

An echo her own earlier words, and she takes it slowly, turning it over in her hands, can see or feel nothing remarkable about it aside from its shape, a perfect egg even with its slightly uneven surface. But then, the narcissus had not felt like anything but a flower, too.

"Break it open," Hades says, not smiling, but his eyes are intent enough, on her, on the rock, that she almost shivers. She might like that look, if the circumstances had been different. May not find it as objectionable now, either, but she’s not of a mind to contemplate such things yet, so she doesn’t.

Focuses on the rock in her hands instead. Feels around it again, skimming her fingertips around the surface of it with a frown, Persephone finds what she needs after a beat or two, used to finding the best place to break flowers off from their stems. Shifting it around, she taps it, using, she hopes, just the right amount of power along with far more mundane strength. She still has to twist the two halves a little until they crack apart, but then they fall cleanly into her hands, one half for each.

The dim light around them catch the recessed, raw gemstones in the hollows of the geode, going from citrine gold in the center to amethyst and sapphire at the edges, lighting them up like sunrise or sunset. She shifts her hands, watching the light shift with the change, the play of colour. It's like when a flower opens up for the first time, revealing its hidden insides. It also feels more natural, like a ripe apple plucked from a branch, compared to the cut and worked - beautiful but sharp - gems all over Hades' halls.

"It's like a flower," she says, and she catches the way Hades' pale eyes turn misty in the edge of her vision, warm in comparison to their usual gray stillness, and finds herself surprisingly pleased she understands his reasoning to give her this, to have her opening it, pleased he thought of her. Pleased he saw something in his domain that reminded him of her despite that this fruit of the earth is cold, not alive.

She does not know what to do about these feelings, these thoughts, but she need not worry.

"Yes. I thought so too." There's the tiniest flash of a smile above the shadow of Hades’ stubbly beard, softening his face for a brief moment. Persephone looks away, because she has to, and Hades turns to leave, to go down the corridor to perform duties that are as never-ending as the jewels that gleam in the two halves of the geode Persephone holds in her hands.

She looks back again at the geode when the corridor is empty, contemplating them for a long time.

~*~

She returns to him the next year with blossoms of everlasting, myrtle and roses in her hair, and offers a similar flower crown to Hades. When he bends to let her place it on his head, Persephone follows it with a kiss.

It is a breath, sweet and light, and it is the first kiss at all.

He offers her his hand, and she takes it, and knows where they are going when he leads the way. He barely touched her the year before, and she ate a couple pomegranate seeds to stand in for the marriage bed as she left; now, then, they finish this, the room filled with the scent of the flowers.


End file.
